1. Field
The following description relates to a carrier network, and more specifically, to an apparatus and method for collecting traffic flow statistics data.
2. Description of the Related Art
A carrier network refers to the one that is operated by a large-scale wired/wireless communications provider, such as a cloud data center, a large enterprise network, and a wired/wireless telecom service provider network. There are tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of network devices required to be managed, e.g., a router and a switch. In order to collect traffic statistics information in these large-scale networks, it is fundamentally important to secure expandability, along with accuracy.
In addition, due to the characteristics of a carrier network composed of a software-defined network (SDN) and a large-scale wired/wireless network that includes a network function virtualization (NFV), there are various heterogeneous network devices, and solutions applicable thereto in common are required.
However, in most of the recent technologies of collecting traffic flow statistics data, solutions, which simultaneously satisfy three conditions of the above-mentioned expandability, accuracy, and heterogeneous independence, do not exist. In other words, only the following solutions exist: a solution that guarantees expandability using a sampling; a solution that guarantees the accuracy by collecting all the flow statistics data without the sampling, but has difficulties in guaranteeing the expandability for a large-scale network; or a solution of a format that cannot accept a heterogeneous network device.